


Sweet Water, Wash Me Down

by modernnature



Series: Jewish Gothic [1]
Category: The Pacific (TV)
Genre: Jewish Character, Jewish Merriell Shelton, Jewish gothic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-30
Updated: 2020-07-30
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:41:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,963
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25603741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/modernnature/pseuds/modernnature
Summary: Written for Sledgefu Week 2020 Day 2: Southern Gothic AUThe bayou feels ancient. Eugene’s breath is stolen by the absolute stillness of it all. The cypress and tupelo trees grow so thick that there’s not a ripple of a breeze in the air. The longer they move across the water, the more exhausted Eugene begins to feel. His head becomes cotton, all thick and light, in the heat of the bayou. He turns his head to the shore again, and he sucks in a short breath when he sees a man lurking in the trees. At first he wonders if it’s Merriell, and then he wonders if he’s going mad.
Relationships: Merriell "Snafu" Shelton/Eugene Sledge
Series: Jewish Gothic [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1970143
Comments: 14
Kudos: 17
Collections: Sledgefu Week 2020





	Sweet Water, Wash Me Down

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you forever and for always to strictlybecca for helping me through everything in my life.
> 
> I've made a few small edits since posting yesterday, but nothing significant.
> 
> If you are on a computer, foreign language translations will be hover-able. If you're on a phone, all of the translations will be available at the end of the work. Enjoy!

August, 1948

As soon as Eugene steps off the train in New Orleans, he feels smothered. By the crowds and the noise and the smells, but also by the thickness of the air. The humidity weighs him down and makes his chest ache as he inhales. He wonders if this is a little what drowning is like. Alabama gets humid, of course, but there’s something about the air here that makes his head swim. 

He reaches into his pocket with damp palms, unfolding a small slip of paper with an address hastily scratched onto it. He adjusts the weight of his hard side suitcase in his hand and walks toward the street to hail a cab. It’s getting on to be evening and there’s a line of taxis idling on the street in front of the train station. Eugene approaches the one nearest to him and rests his forearm on the open passenger side window, leaning in to see the driver. 

“Excuse me, I was wondering if you could take me here.” He passes the paper to the driver who reads it with a snort.

“I can, but I can’t say I’d recommend it. There’s strangeness out on the bayou, boy.” Eugene doesn’t consider himself superstitious much anymore, but there’s an ominous tone to the driver’s voice that makes his arms erupt with gooseflesh. The driver reaches back to pass the address to him, and Eugene takes it with a bemused expression.

“Don’t you need the address?”

“No, sir,” the driver says with a chuckle. “Everyone knows how to get to the swamp.”

\--------------------------

The drive feels as though it takes hours. The trees seem to crawl by them, their arms stretching out with Spanish moss dripping from them like fingers. The air rushes past Eugene through the open window but it’s too warm to provide any relief. He can feel his hair growing damp with sweat, can feel it pool above his lip and in the hollow of his throat. 

Finally the cab stops. They’re on the edge of the swamp now and Eugene can hear the frogs singing. Eugene thanks the cab driver as he hands over the fare, trying to ignore the knots in his stomach as the man laughs and pulls away. He looks around, but all he sees is a run-down looking shop. The wood structure is almost silver with age and wear and when he reaches out to it he finds it soft to the touch. He walks inside. 

There’s a fan rattling by the cash register, blowing hot air into the face of the bored-looking cashier. The woman looks older than Eugene thinks she probably is, and she smokes a dark cigarette and flips through a tattered paperback book. Despite her never looking up, Eugene has a feeling in his gut that she knows exactly where he is and what he’s looking at. The shop carries a strange assortment of things; on his way to the woman at the register he passes some canned vegetables, heavy-looking candles that smell of beeswax, fresh cut bougainvillea, and a skull so realistic he has to turn his eyes away. 

“Excuse me, ma’am?” Eugene steps up to the counter, setting his suitcase down next to his feet. The woman raises her eyes to his face with visible disinterest. “I’m looking for a man - Merriell Shelton. I was given this address as his place of residence.” 

“Ain’t nobody livin’ here, cher.” She blows out a lungful of cigarette smoke without bothering to turn away. The fan blows it gently into Eugene’s face - Lucky Strikes. “But I know who can help.” She walks to the window behind the counter that overlooks the water and pushes it open. "Filles! Ne partez pas encore!" She turns back to Eugene with a lazy smile. One of her teeth glints gold and his stomach turns, images of fresh dead Japanese soldiers flashing through his mind. “Go on out. They’ll help you.” Eugene thanks her and grabs his luggage, fighting with himself to keep a normal pace.

When he exits the store and turns toward the water, there are two girls standing at the dock, apparently sisters from first glance. Behind them, an old wooden pirogue bobs in the water, laden down by baskets of goods from the store. Eugene shivers to see one of the skulls in the basket. The pirogue is about wide enough to sit two adults shoulder to shoulder but not so large that the older girl can’t manage it on her own. A long, thick paddle lays across its seats with grooves the shape of fingers worn into the wood. It’s tied to the dock with a fraying rope that the younger girl has her hand on. 

Both girls have the same riot of ink-dark curls made wild by the humidity. Their skin is that familiar shade that Eugene can see with his eyes closed, caramel taken off the stove just a bit too early. The younger of the two has eyes that hover somewhere between green, gray, and blue. The other’s are unsettlingly dark, so brown it’s hard to determine where her gaze has landed. Their eyes are huge and dark and rimmed with jet black lashes. Eugene can’t help but shiver under their gaze. Both are wearing well-worn clothing that is clearly home sewn, clothes of muted browns and greens with skirts that fall to the girls’ knees, exposing scratched and bruised shins. Both are barefoot and wearing drying mud as if it was shoes.

Before he can say anything, the elder of the two steps forward. She’s clearly a Shelton, but beyond the skin, curls, and wideness of eye she doesn’t look much like her brother. She isn’t as bird-boned frail as her brother, for one. Her figure has more substance to it, curving and soft where her brother is all sharp edges. Her nose is not the perfect delicate slope that Shelton’s is. It’s larger - like his own, he guesses - with a bump down the ridge that makes her look almost Roman in profile, but somehow not. She holds herself with a fierce kind of authority as though she’s unafraid to take up as much space as she is owed in the world. Those dark eyes lack the hungry, hunted quality that Eugene remembers from Peleliu and Okinawa, though, he supposes, that’s only right. She’s almost grown, but there’s something stubborn in the set of her mouth that he’s only ever seen in teenagers.

“You a friend of Merriell’s? Heard you say his name in the store.” Her voice is lower than Eugene expects, with the same syrupy slowness that Shelton’d always had, that he supposes most folks from Louisiana must have. There’s a practiced carelessness to her tone but her eyes flash with protective suspicion.

“Somethin’ like that, I guess.” Eugene isn’t sure how friendly he feels toward Shelton these days or if the bastard would call them friends. “Are you Sheltons too?”

The girl laughs, the sound echoing around them. “Somethin’ like that.”

He steps forward with his hand held out. 

“Eugene Sledge, miss. I fought with your brother in the Pacific.” He shakes her hand and is impressed by the strength of it. 

“Sledge, huh?” Her face lights up as her mouth stretches in a wide grin. "Dos hartz hot mir gezogt." She turns back to look at her sister. “Didn’t I keep sayin’ it? Didn’t Mama and I see it?” She sounds smug. Eugene isn’t sure what language she spoke, but it sounds worlds away from the Cajun French he got used to hearing from Shelton during the war.

The little one peers around her sister with obvious curiosity. She could be Shelton’s double if she was a little taller and her face a little meaner. She’s got the same fine bones, the same halting, twitchy movements of a person who can’t quite keep themselves still. She takes after her older sister in attitude, though. Despite being no more than twelve, she has an air about her that makes it clear she expects to be treated with respect, as though no one’s ever told her girls are meant to be seen and not heard. It makes Eugene glad to see it and can’t help but find it endearing despite what he’s been taught.

“I’m Agnès. This here’s Simone. We’re Merriell’s sisters. Come on home with us. Mama’d love to meet you.” She smiles and all Eugene can see is a wolf.

\---------------------

The bayou feels ancient. Eugene’s breath is stolen by the absolute stillness of it all. The cypress and tupelo trees grow so thick that there’s not a ripple of a breeze in the air. Agnès sits in the middle of the boat, rowing with the confidence of one who’s had a whole life’s worth of practice. Eugene and Simone are seated side-by-side in the back to act as counterweights to the shopping stored in the front. Simone sits with her arm pressed against Eugene’s, her warmth causing his sleeve to dampen with sweat. He feels her arm press more firmly into his with each breath she draws in. 

Eugene turns to look behind them and is taken aback by how the water looks completely undisturbed, as if they’d never been on it at all. It doesn’t seem that it’s ever been disturbed before. The water looks thick and dark and so unlike the water in the Pacific that he feels the need to touch it to get a sense of the temperature and consistency of it. He gently lowers his hand into the water, letting out a soft, relieved huff of breath when he feels the thin warmth of it. 

“Best keep your hands in the boat, sheifale.” Agnès doesn’t even turn around to look at him. Eugene can hear the smirk in her voice, a trait that is so tantalizingly and infuriatingly like her brother. From somewhere nearby, the trees seem to utter a rumbling groan. Eugene hastily pulls his hand back into his lap, shaking the tepid water off of his fingertips. “Alligators stay in their place and we stay in ours.” 

Now that she’s mentioned it, Eugene finds himself searching the brackish water for beady eyes and armored skin. He isn’t disappointed. Once, twice, three times he sees something sink low into the water and immediately disappear beneath the surface. 

He never knew something so still could be so loud. The bayou croaks and groans and sings and breathes with the living things inside of it. The frogs are the loudest, their peeping coming from every which way until Eugene feels completely surrounded even though he can’t see even one of them. 

Most exciting is the sound of new birds he’s never heard before. He longs to step onto the murky glass of the water and walk to the trees. He wants to hear them, see them, sketch them. He leans toward the water and feels Simone’s spindly fingers grip onto his sleeve to pull him back. 

“Faites attention,” she murmurs in warning. “They all tell lies.” Eugene isn’t sure who she means.

He settles back into his seat, and Simone hesitantly lets go of his shirt. Agnès cuts her gaze back to her sister.

"Haltn im zikher,” she snaps. The younger sister shrinks back under the heat of her gaze, mumbling under her breath. Although he can’t understand her words, he can understand the language of someone petulantly talking back to their older sibling. 

The longer they move across the water, the more exhausted Eugene begins to feel. His head becomes cotton, all thick and light, in the heat of the bayou. He turns his head to the shore again, and he sucks in a short breath when he sees a man lurking in the trees. At first he wonders if it’s Merriell, and then he wonders if he’s going mad.

“There’s someone in the trees,” Eugene murmurs lowly to himself. He narrows his eyes to better see the dark, murky figure before his brows furrow hard. He can’t make sense of what he’s seeing. His slow, stifled thoughts struggle to put words to this sight. The figure seems to be the bayou made man. He stands tall and solid, but his features are indistinguishable beneath the mud and muck spread across his skin. Foreign markings that Eugene doesn't recognize have been carefully etched into the figure’s forehead, the only thing about him that’s clear. As the boat passes by, the earthen sentinel slowly turns his head to watch them go with an eyeless gaze. Eugene flinches back from the figure only to be stilled by Simone’s small-boned hand. 

“So long as you’re with us he won’t harm you.” Her voice is calm and sweet. “We call him Goolam. He protects the family. Has for years and years. Mama says that her mama’s bubbe made ‘im on account of she was so scared of what hides in the dark. Mama says the bayou holds all kind of evils that we'll never even know.” She’s smiling with all the innocence of childhood and he shudders.

“Fuck,” he breathes, his heart in his throat as he realizes he has no escape from this, no way out. “I can’t do this. Take me back.” He looks up at Agnès’ back, at the relaxed slope of her shoulders. “Did you hear, I said I need to go back!” There’s panic choking its way up his throat until he’s surprised he’s not spitting up blood. It feels as though two enormous, clawed hands have grabbed hold of his chest and are crushing tight on his lungs and his heart and he pants the heavy air uselessly. Simone takes his hand in hers, murmuring soothing things in French and something else until he feels like maybe he won’t drown just sitting here.

“Almost there,” murmurs Agnès as she points ahead of the pirogue at an enormous cypress tree draped in Spanish moss so long it almost touches the water.

Standing on stilts just past the tree is a house that might have been white once but has since faded to blend in with the moss-covered trees surrounding it. It seems heavy under the weight of the water in its boards, causing it to sag and lean curiously. Nearest to them is a sleeping porch swaddled in mosquito netting thick enough to make it impossible to see in. The house is only accessible by a flight of fragile-looking stairs that lead to an open porch furnished with two old rocking chairs. The railing surrounding the porch is roost to several large, pitch-dark ravens who cry and chatter as the boat draws nearer. A dim light emanates from the window, flickering every so often as someone walks by the light. On the side of the house, a downward pointing hand has been painstakingly painted. Resting in its palm is a great, unblinking eye depicted in vibrant shades of blue and white.

The sounds of the bayou here are almost deafening. Its humming and groaning surround the house like a blanket, insulating it from any hint of the world outside the swamp.

Simone stands suddenly as they pull up alongside the dock and launches herself onto it, causing the boat to rock so deep it’s edges almost slip under the water. Agnès shouts at her in French, he thinks, as Simone laughs. His hands grip the sides of the boat until his knuckles go white and his panic lurches back to life for a short moment. 

Agnès tosses Simone the frayed rope and she makes quick work of securing the boat to the rickety dock below the house. Agnès climbs out and onto the rotting wood, holding out her hand to help Eugene up. His cheeks burn red as he takes it and lets her haul him up. In the face of the girls’ easy calm, he feels embarrassed at his panic. He reaches back into the boat with a shaking hand to grab his luggage. Agnès starts to gather the shopping in her arms, and Eugene stumbles forward with his suitcase in his left hand.

“Let me help with that. I’ve got a spare hand.” He holds his unsteady arm out and she slides the handle of two baskets over it with a wide grin on her face.

“A gentleman, a mensch,” she purrs teasingly. Eugene flushes red again and Agnès laughs with her head tipped back. Her laugh echoes around the house and rings up into the trees. Eugene is reminded so strongly of Shelton in his happier moments that he almost can’t breathe again. 

Simone is halfway up the stairs, her bare feet thudding against each slat. “Merriell,” she calls out, and Eugene freezes like he’s been stuck fast to the wood. He doesn't feel prepared to see Merriell again. Not yet. Agnès grabs his arm and pulls him along. “Merriell! I have a present for you! Come out to get it!”

The screen door leading into the house hits the wall with a slam. “Why are you yellin’, girl? What could you have gotten at the store that’s so goddamn excitin’?” The voice is so familiar that his bones ache. Eugene’s murmuring heart is beating so loud he’s sure Shelton can hear it from the top of the stairs. He almost wants to turn back to the water and leap in, let it pull him under so smooth and so sweet that he wouldn’t even leave a splash behind but Agnès has his wrist tight in her hand and she won’t let him turn away. 

They reach the top of the stairs. And Eugene looks and drinks him in until he’s drowning with it.

Merriell is standing there with a cigarette between his fingers. His dark curls are as long as they ever got on Okinawa and Eugene can remember how soft they were when they were clean, how it felt to pull them until Merriell’s neck was bared. He’s shirtless as he ever was with the same tags hanging around his neck, but he’s gained some weight back. There’s a softness where his stomach meets the waist of his pants that was never there during the war. His belt isn’t pulled so tight. His feet are bare against the wood and Eugene looks at those skinny feet and remembers how cold they get at night and how they blistered and bled after marching. The bags under his eyes are gone and there’s wrinkles at the corners of them that mean he smiles wide and often. Eugene’s eyes start to feel hot and scratched up at the thought that Shelton might be happy. That he’s healed and he can laugh. That he’s done that without Eugene while Eugene’s been sat at home screaming into the darkness every fucking night seeing Shelton shot, Shelton buried, Shelton hanged, dismembered, leaving him on that goddamn train alone.

Shelton’s cigarette falls from his fingers and lands on the top of his bare foot, but he doesn’t flinch or swear at the red streak it leaves behind. His eyes never leave Eugene’s face and he looks just as determined to drown. 

“Gene,” he breathes, his voice obviously aiming for casual and missing by a mile. 

It’s a shame that Shelton isn’t wearing a shirt - and he truly never thought he’d think that - because he’s been robbed of the ability to grab him by the lapels and push him against the house so hard his head spins. He’s robbed of a place to hold onto as he shakes and shakes and shakes him. Eugene feels his hands curl into fists, his jagged fingernails shaping crescent moons into his palms. 

“You son of a bitch,” he hisses. His cheeks are hot and for a wild moment he thinks he’s bleeding until he realizes he’s crying. “You stupid piece of shit. You left me alone on that fucking train!” He shoves against Shelton’s chest, his hands itching to stay against that soft skin, itching to dig his nails in until bloody lines are rent into it and no one can tell Eugene that this isn't real. 

“You gonna hit me, Sledgehammer?” Merriell’s voice is a drawl, but there’s something flickering behind his eyes. Fear, maybe. 

Oh, Eugene wants to. His bones ache with the need to uncoil and hurt until Shelton’s blood is soaked up by the wood beneath their feet. But instead he finds himself wrapped around Shelton, holding on so tight he thinks they both might shatter. By the time they pull away, both of Shelton’s sisters along with all of the shopping and Eugene’s suitcase have disappeared into the house with less noise than a whisper.

“Merriell,” Eugene chokes, and his voice sounds as foreign to him as the bayou’s birdsongs. Shelton steps forward and presses a hard, long kiss to his forehead before flitting away again as though he’s afraid he’s done wrong. 

“Later,” he says, voice low. “Come inside first. Mama wants to meet you. You’ll get eaten alive out here, anyway.” He's sure he means the mosquitos, but there’s a feeling low in Eugene’s belly that thinks that might not be just a figure of speech as he follows Shelton inside.

The house seems separate from the exterior on the inside. There’s no sign of age or rot, no slant to the floor to indicate the sagging Eugene could see from the pirogue. The home is filled with the chaos of four people living in a space too small, but the house seems to be stretching itself outward like an inhale to give its family more room. It’s warm in a way Eugene’s house never is. Where his parents' home is stately and refined, this house is worn and beloved. As his eyes scan over the kitchen, the dining room, and the living area he can hear the laughter of a hundred people living, birthing, and dying in its walls so clear that he wants to put his hands over his ears. 

There are odd things spread throughout the home. One wall is decorated with a dozen alligator skulls of different sizes ranging from the palm of a hand to a horse's head. Each room has a small cylindrical ornament hanging crooked on the doorframe. There are bones scattered on tabletops and on the floors. Candles are lit on seemingly every surface and despite the heat outside there is a fire smoldering in a crooked hearth. Herbs are hung out to dry in front of the fire and along the walls of the kitchen, never far from reach. There are eyes everywhere: painted on the walls, hanging on tapestries, etched into the wooden floor as if with a sharp knife and Eugene knows he is being watched. Things skitter unseen in the dark lit corners, but he finds himself strangely at peace. 

His mind seems to shy away from the unsettling shadows of this swamp. He can’t seem to wrap his mind around the strange things he’s seen and heard even though they happened with his own eyes and ears. He knows his dreams will be full of Louisiana mud tonight, sucking him under and holding him down until he can’t see, can’t breathe, can only drink in mouthful after mouthful of rotting earth. But right now he’s not afraid. Not behind the walls of this house.

A woman who can only be Shelton’s mama walks in. She’s got his skin, warm and rich in the light. She’s a tall woman, round and sturdy and strong. Despite this, her hands are thin and fine-boned and callused. To his shock an elaborate, filigree hand is tattooed on the back of her own like a fine glove. When she beckons him closer, he can see that on her palm sits another watching eye. He can see her daughters in her with stunning clarity and his heart aches. Her silver-streaked curls are wrapped in a dark green turban of sorts but they refuse to be contained and twist like snakes around her red cheeks. Her freckled arms are bare up to her shoulders in a way his mother’s would never be. Around her neck is a gold star and Eugene jolts in surprise, looking over at Shelton for a moment. He didn’t know how much he didn’t know about Shelton.

“Mrs. Shelton? I’m Eugene Sledge, I served with Merriell during the war.” He steps forward with his hand outstretched. She takes his hand in both of hers with a grin so wide her eyes almost close.

“Miryam Bordelon, but please call me Miryam.” She beams at him. “I owe you a great debt, Mr. Sledge. You saved my boy’s life over there. My boy is precious to me and I’d be lost without him.” She touches his cheek and runs a gentle thumb over his cheekbone. Eugene can feel his face heat beneath her touch. 

“Precious, huh?” Eugene ignores the blood flooding into his cheeks and looks at Shelton from the corner of his eye. 

“Mama thinks I’m special ‘cause I’m the only boy for generations.” Shelton smirks and pulls out another cigarette.

“With any luck it’ll stay that way,” grouses Agnès as she walks out from the kitchen. Her brother flicks the burnt out match at her and she retreats to her bedroom with a slammed door. They can hear Simone's giggles echoing through the house but Eugene can't tell what direction it's coming from. Miryam smacks the side of Shelton’s head and he hisses as he bats her hand away. 

"Hock mir nisht en chinik,” he whines. 

"Hock MIR nisht en chinik,” she says back with her eyes narrowed into a glare. She turns back to Eugene, and he feels trapped by her gaze as though he’s been caught in a lie or a crime. She sighs and rubs her eyes with the heels of her stained hands. She goes to a cupboard and pulls out a stack of threadbare sheets, handing them to Eugene. They're warm and soft in his arms. “Merriell, go set up beds for yourselves on the sleeping porch. You’ll be too hot in the back room tonight, and I think you should speak without your sisters listening in.” She walks to Shelton and kisses her son on the cheek.

“Don’t let him go again, cher,” she says in a low voice and the heavy air all but disappears from the room. Eugene's lungs are ice and every breath he pulls in spears through his chest. He hears a death rattle in the air and wonders who’s dying before he thinks it might be him. He looks at Miryam, wants to prostrate himself at her feet in terror, but there’s no hatred in her eyes, no disgust.

“I know how my boy was made, bebe,” she says to him with a mother’s smile, and he feels the anxiety fluttering in his chest perch and settle on his ribs. “Our lord God loves love, and I think my boy deserves it after all he’s seen. He’d want the same for you.” Still wearing the same soft smile, Miryam turns and walks to her room, extinguishing candles with licked fingertips as she goes.

For the first time in over two years, Eugene and Shelton are alone. The silence stretches thick and uneasy between them, and Eugene finds that he cannot stand to look at Shelton for more than a glance at a time. Shelton clears his throat and tilts his head toward the sleeping porch. He grabs a candle and leads the way, pushing through a slatted door riddled with holes to reveal a wooden room with four bare mattresses spread across the floor. The walls are mostly windows, stretched over with layers of mesh and screen to keep the bayou out. He sets his burden on the mattress near the door.

They dress for bed in silence. Eugene has yearned so much he’s bled for want of touching Shelton over the past two years, and he knows he’d be allowed to if he reached out. But the humidity of the swamp feels binding around his arms and so he keeps his hands clenched into fists at his side. He looks through the netted windows but finds the bayou is completely, impenetrably dark. Dim moonlight fights through the trees in slivers, lighting up the gleaming eyes of alligators below, and Eugene feels as though the floor might tip at any moment and pour him down into their waiting mouths. 

Shelton lights another cigarette, sitting on a bare mattress in his boxer shorts and his dog tags. Eugene knows him, knows the bones of him and he knows Shelton will never talk first.

“Your family’s real nice, Shelton,” he murmurs, still looking at the glowing orbs floating in the dark. “Not what I expected. You’re Jewish?” 

“In a way. Does it matter?” And oh, he sounds riled now and it gets Eugene’s blood running hot through his veins. Eugene turns to face him and glares. 

“Fuck you, Snafu, you know it doesn’t. I just wasn’t expecting it. You never told me.” 

“You never asked, Sledgehammer and I wasn’t gonna fuckin’ volunteer it.” He takes a long, harsh drag off his cigarette. “Not popular around here. Not popular in Mobile either, I’d guess.” And Eugene has to flush at that because he’s not sure if he’s knowingly met a Jewish person before. 

“That why your mother’s name is different?” He leans against the frame of the window, his arms crossed. Shelton snorts. 

“Nah, that’s a family thing. Girls take mama’s name, boys take daddy’s. The women in my family been Bordelons since we got to Louisiana. Story has it the first Bordelon was due to be kicked out of Louisiana by the French king on account of bein’ Jewish, so she found her way out into the swamp where some runaways hid out.” He shrugs his bony shoulders and Eugene can’t tear his eyes away from them. He’s desperate to scrape his teeth across those collarbones. “Been mixin’ magic with God ever since, I guess.” 

Eugene nods and sits on a mattress across the floor from Shelton. This faith feels so very different from his own that he can’t think of anything to say that he can be sure won’t offend. Things feel so very tense in this room, a hair’s breadth away from shattering into a million sharp and tiny shards that can never be repaired. So instead he pulls his pipe out of his bag and starts to pack it, his lungs singing out for tobacco. Shelton makes a soft noise and when Eugene looks up there’s something soft and painful in his eyes. 

“You still use that thing?”

“Obviously,” Eugene snaps. He closes his eyes, takes in a deep lungful of cottony air, and breathes it back out, passing a little bit of himself back to the bayou. He lights the pipe and tries to pretend like his hand isn’t trembling. “Sorry." His mumbled apology sits heavy between them. "I thought you lived in New Orleans. That’s what you said, anyway.”

“I did. Mama wanted me home after the war. Said she missed me too much. She sensed somethin’ dark in me and wanted me home where she could have eyes on me. I wasn’t right, my soul wasn't right. You saw it too, Sledge.” 

And he had. Eugene had watched this man, this beloved man, reach into a dead man’s mouth for gold. He’d seen him flick coral into an open skull and stand unmoved before a baby wailing in the wreckage of his family. He’d seen a hunger in Shelton that could only be sated by blood and agony that had frightened him so bad until he saw it in himself too. 

But he’d also seen satisfaction in him, and love, and warmth. A fierce desire to please and a strong streak of loyalty stretched so taut it trembled. He wonders where this Shelton falls on that scale these days. 

“You should have told me, Shelton. I woulda come back here with you, fought those demons with you. I have them too.” His voice is tight and strained and he’s grateful for the flickering protection that the dim candlelight brings. 

“You needed to go home to your own mama, Eugene. You were supposed to go home, go to college, become a doctor like your daddy and be something good and normal. You can’t be that here! Do you understand that? Ain't no life for you out here.” Shelton’s voice begins to rise in volume. 

“That wasn’t your choice to make, god damnit! I thought we were gonna come home together, and I woke up on that train alone!” Eugene slams his fist against the floor and he gasps as he feels splinters pierce his skin. A moment of silence. “You told me I wouldn’t be alone, Shelton,” his voice catches harshly and he pants in another thick mouthful of air. “You said we’d be together. The rest didn't matter. That was all I wanted.” His hand and his cheeks are wet and when he licks the wetness off his mouth he tastes iron instead of salt. “All I wanted was you.”

Shelton makes a low, wounded noise. Eugene looks over and sees Shelton looking like a crazed thing with his elbows on his knees and his fists in his hair. 

“Merriell…” He doesn’t know how to bridge the gap between them, so he sits with his hands curled into the pilled fabric of his sleeping pants and waits. 

“I’m sorry, Gene.” It sounds like he could cry, and the bayou is silent around them for the first time, no peepers, no birds, as if it’s holding its breath to hear what will be said. “I didn’t think I could be fixed. I thought it was just darkness for me and I didn’t want to bring you into it. I’m sorry.”

Part of Eugene is still raging like a hurricane, beating the inside of his ribs and leaving dark, painful bruises. He’s sure part of him will always be angry, just like part of him will always have the war playing in his mind on repeat, a horror film of blood and death and unrelenting agony. But he wants more than anger. He wants wrinkles on the sides of his eyes from smiling. He wants the dark circles resting above his cheekbones gone. He wants to sleep, to fuck, to love, to be loved. 

He sets his pipe to the side and crawls over to Merriell’s mattress, taking his wrists with smarting, wood-studded hands and pulling them away from those soft, wild curls. “Look at me,” he murmurs. He speaks so softly in the absolute silence. Merriell looks up at him with huge eyes that echo the haunted gaze he’d had in the war. 

“Do you still want me?” He’s pleased to hear the firmness in his voice, that he can still pretend he isn't broken. 

“Every day, cher.”

“Okay, then.” Eugene advances forward and into Merriell’s space, pressing their mouths together hard. He lets go of Merriell’s wrists and slides his hands into those soft curls that he didn’t think he’d ever feel again. 

He knows it’s not fixed. There might always be a part of him that flinches away from trusting Merriell, and that hurricane might always stay screaming behind his ribs. He’ll still have his old nightmares of Merriell being tortured and killed (with new dreams now of Merriell being dragged into murky water by a man made of mud and moss). Merriell will always have darkness in him no matter how hard Eugene and Miryam try to heal his bleeding parts. 

But for now, Eugene lets himself be pressed back into a bare mattress in a swamp in Louisiana as the bayou exhales and starts to sing into the night.

**Author's Note:**

> I was thinking today about Louisiana and what Hoodoo would be like if it was influenced by Judaism instead of Catholicism, and it led me here! This is less about the incredible true world of Hoodoo and more about Jewish mysticism intertwined with magic; absolutely no disrespect is meant toward Hoodoo or its practitioners. I'm always down for Jewish representation in my favorite fandoms. 
> 
> This obviously is not based on the real men, but rather on the characters depicted in the TV series. No disrespect is meant to anyone. 
> 
> Title comes from Nothing But the Water (II) by Grace Potter and the Nocturnals. 
> 
> Translations from French and Yiddish to English:  
> Filles! Ne partez pas encore! - Girls! Don't leave yet!
> 
> Dos hartz hot mir gezogt - my heart told me/I knew this was coming
> 
> Sheifale - lamb, term of endearment for someone sweet
> 
> Faites attention - be careful
> 
> Haltn im zikher - keep him safe
> 
> Hock mir nisht en chinik - literally: don't hit me on the head. also means don't give me a headache
> 
> This was written for Sledgefu Week 2020 Day 2: Southern Gothic AU because Southern Gothic (especially Louisiana gothic) is just great.


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